


This Bright Night

by boxparade



Series: Until The Night Is Dawn [3]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, Family, POV Child, Past Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-10
Updated: 2012-07-10
Packaged: 2017-11-09 13:22:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/455916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boxparade/pseuds/boxparade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>She can feel the way her grin keeps getting wider and shakes her head at the memory. It’s ridiculous, the story of where she came from—like something right out of science fiction. But, of course, they live with the Avengers. Mom should’ve expected something like this.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Bright Night

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Children of Lantean Design](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/9755) by Xela. 



> • Claire is 12, by the way, but very mature for her age. Not too sure about her voice in this one. All I remember from when I was 12 is that I started wearing a lot of black and perfected the art of glaring. I like to think the rest of the population was a bit more rational than I was.

When Claire walks into the kitchen, she honestly doesn’t expect anyone to be in there. It’s really late, and while Tony is undoubtedly up and prowling around in his workshop, everyone else should be sleeping. The only reason she isn’t is because of the nightmares, but she’s been handling them pretty well, and all she really needs is a mug of cocoa before she can go back to sleep.

But as it is, there are two figures in the dimly-lit kitchen, sitting at the island, and when she finally sees them, her eyes widen and she sort of jumps and squeaks, and the two figures startle and pull apart and _oh my god, they were kissing._

Claire stares at them, not moving, and she would’ve thought that Natasha at least would’ve heard her approach, but then again, she’s trained in stealth by the best, and Natasha was a little…preoccupied. Claire blushes furiously, and is kind of relieved to see that a similar tinge appears on Pepper’s cheeks, and it’s only there a moment before her usual, calm-and-collected demeanor takes over. “Hi, Claire,” she says softly, and Claire blows out a nervous breath, darts her eyes to Natasha (who is still silent and staring) and says “Hi. Um. I just wanted…cocoa, I can leave—”

“No, it’s fine,” Natasha says curtly, finally breaking her gaze and looking away, and if Claire didn’t know better, she would think Natasha was blushing a bit, herself. Claire just waits a moment before nodding again, and then guides herself to the fridge to grab some milk, get the cocoa packets from the cabinet, then pulls out a mug and turns around again. Pepper and Natasha are sharing a nervous look when she does, but she pretends not to notice the way they sort of jump again, and says “Want some?”

They both hesitate, but Pepper eventually clears her throat and says “Sure,” and Natasha nods. Claire turns back and pulls out two more mugs, filling them each with milk, and putting them into a little triangle in the microwave. She presses the right buttons, and then the microwave lights up, hums, and starts spinning. She takes a deep breath and turns back around.

It’s Pepper who speaks first, as she suspected it would be. “Sorry, we didn’t think—”

“It’s okay,” Claire says quickly, chewing on the inside of her cheek to keep from asking more, from trying to ask the millions of questions spinning around in her mind, making her dizzy. Amidst all that uncertainty, though, is a faint note of something warm, and kind of…happy.

Natasha stares harshly at the tabletop for a moment, and then seems to loosen in a way that mirrors a shrug. “It’s not like you didn’t expect it to happen eventually.” She sounds content, and not quite so freaked-out, though Natasha is never really freaked-out.

“Um,” she says, before she can stop herself, and then bites her lip hard. She wasn’t going to do this—wasn’t going to talk about it, not with them, because she didn’t want them to feel obligated to do anything, or fated, or just…anything. But Pepper and Natasha both look up at her with eyes so familiar, and she knows that they probably look so ridiculous sitting there in the middle of the night, all of them with bright red hair, waiting for mugs of cocoa, and it feels like home. Like it never was before.

She sighs, and figures hiding things from them was never going to work, anyway, so she ducks her head and says “I didn’t, actually.”

Claire waits until one of them prompts her for more, and it’s Pepper that does, with a quiet hum and a soft look that makes Claire feel warm. The microwave beeps, and Pepper and Claire both jump, and Claire goes to get the mugs, grateful for the distraction. She mixes in the packets in silence, one at a time, and then opens a fourth packet to split between the three mugs, because it’s never quite chocolatey enough with just one.

She hesitates when she does, though, because maybe this version of Pepper and Natasha don’t like their cocoa with extra chocolate. Maybe this version of Pepper and Natasha don’t even like cocoa at all. She’s just being stupid. She feels tears well up in her eyes and swallows them back, because she’s stronger than that. It’s not like this ever really happened back home—she’d had cocoa with mom before, but she can never quite recall Tasha sharing anything with her. The longest they were even in the same room was for her training, and even then, Tasha was always cold, and removed, and she never so much as looked at Claire with anything other than calculating, analyzing eyes.

She turns, hands the two of them their mugs, and then grabs her own and settles herself on the chair across from them. They all avoid each other’s eyes. It’s Natasha, surprisingly, that asks Claire to go on. Her voice sounds soft—soft in a way she’d never used with Claire, or…well, Tasha had never sounded like that. Her Tasha. This Tasha is…different, and she feels like a traitor for thinking that maybe it’s not so bad being here, after all, if it means…

Well.

She chews on her lower lip again and huddles close around her cocoa. She reaches up to sweep her hair behind her ear. It’s getting long again. It hasn’t been long since she lost mom. It’s…nice.

She clears her throat and chances a look up at two women that are impossible, that shouldn’t exist, and yet, somehow, do. “My parents—” she starts, but then purses her lips. That’s not the right place to start—not really. She frowns a little, and then feels herself smile because of course, what better place to start than the one and only, “Mr. Stark—the Mr. Stark of my universe—invented this machine. I don’t really know why he decided to build it, but mom always just rolled her eyes and said ‘Tony’ like that explained everything.” She looks up, and Pepper is smiling at her, and it doesn’t hurt quite so much.

“So, anyway, he built this machine, and it was still in the testing phase, but he accidentally left it turned on,” Pepper’s mouth twitches upward, and Claire clamps down on a laugh, because yeah, of course Tony would do something like that. “And so my mom went down to get him to eat something, but he wasn’t there, and she accidentally touched the machine.”

She can feel the way her grin keeps getting wider and shakes her head at the memory. It’s ridiculous, the story of where she came from—like something right out of science fiction. But, of course, they live with the Avengers. Mom should’ve expected something like this. “And then, don’t ask me how, but my other mom—” she swallows. The words feel uncomfortable on her tongue—she rarely said them, back home, because whenever she did, Tasha would always close off, and look at her with the kind of disappointment that Claire didn’t really know how to handle.

She dares herself to look up, first at Pepper, because she knows Pepper will make her feel safe, and then at Natasha. But this Natasha doesn’t look like her Tasha. She’s watching Claire with quiet, curious eyes, and she hides a small smile behind her mug, and Claire thinks this might be okay, now. That maybe she can have this, when she never could before. Maybe…

“My other mom wound up down there, and then she touched the machine, and there was a bright light and then,” she shrugged a shoulder and felt her lips twist up at the corner. “That’s where I came from.”

When she takes a sip of her cocoa, just the right temperature, Pepper looks a little confused. “Are you saying that Tony—” she stops, mulling it over, and then offers a small, twinkling laugh when she shakes her head. “Never mind.”

Claire huffs out an amused breath and thinks _‘mom’._ She knows, okay, she _knows_ that these people aren’t their parents. Their parents are dead. So then, really, what’s the harm? If she can’t have mom back, then she might as well settle for this. It’s better than the emptiness. It’s better than being alone, like Sammy—he still isn’t handling it well. It terrifies her to think how close they all were to ending up like Sammy. Finally escaping only to realize you were still alone? She can’t imagine.

She shakes her head, and some of the laughter has left her voice when she starts speaking again. “Anyway, I was an accident. Mom was furious with Mr. Stark for _months,_ but she eventually forgave him. Right around the time I was born, I suspect. Tash—” her voice cuts out so she can glance at Natasha, trying to judge her reaction. They’d asked her—they wanted to know.

Besides, she can deal with rejection. She’s had plenty of that. She sets her jaw and tells herself she doesn’t care if this Tasha is different or not. She doesn’t. She’ll still have mom—Pepper. They’ve managed by themselves before, and they can do it again. They will.

“Tasha didn’t. She never forgave Tony, and she never forgave mom, and she just…” Claire ducks her head and lowers her voice, “She didn’t want me. She carried me for nine months, because mom asked, but that was it. She wasn’t ready to be a mom, and so this–” Claire gestures to the two of them, referring to what they were doing when she walked in, and doesn’t look either of them in the eye. “never happened.

“It was fine. Mom and I did okay, and she didn’t completely disown me, she just…” she swallows thickly and refuses to look up, letting her hair fall forward, hiding her face. “didn’t love me,” she finishes quietly, and tells herself _it’s okay, it’s okay, you’re okay._

She closes her eyes and waits until she can press it back in, clear the emotion from her eyes and her face, and then she steels herself before she looks up. Pepper is staring at her with those wide, doe-eyes, glassy and filled with love. She offers a smile—she’s _strong,_ darn it, she can do this—and then looks at Natasha.

Natasha is staring at her, and for a second she’s so terrified that it’s happening all over again, that she’s finally gotten a second chance only to lose her again, that she was just never meant to have this—but her eyes aren’t the eyes of her Tasha. They’re entirely her own, and they’re kind in a way she’s never known, and it’s like those ridiculous dreams she used to have. The ones where they were a real family. The ones where her Tasha loved her, and loved mom, and they were okay.

Claire draws in a shaky breath, and Natasha says softly, sincerely, “I’m sorry.” As if she’s apologizing for her other self, a version of her she’s never known and will never meet. As much as they’re the same, they’re completely different people, and it’s what nearly breaks Claire. Because her Tasha would never say that—would never think to feel bad for the mistakes of her counterpart. She knows this much.

And yet here she is, facing the living ghost of the parent that never loved her, and it’s slowly chipping away at Claire’s carefully constructed walls. Because this Tasha is _apologizing_ for the sins of her Tasha, like it’s her fault—like Claire doesn’t understand that they’re two completely different people.

And yet.

She offers a watery smile, promises herself she isn’t going to break, and then does exactly that because Tasha—this Tasha, the Tasha she’d always hoped for but never had—reaches over the small table and brushes her hair behind her ear, so gentle, so loving, and she just.

She smiles, bright and sad, and she knows it’s not the same, because her parents are dead and nothing changes that, but it doesn’t hurt so much anymore. She can think about it and still breathe, and she sees them in this Pepper and Natasha. Sees her parents in the small gestures.

The wry smile that Pepper gets whenever Tony does something stupidly kind. The barely-contained amusement when Tasha sees Clint do something typical. The way they look at each other, sometimes, like they’re sharing a secret only they know, except it’s happier, here. They’re different in a way that defines them, and yet makes it so Claire can have this. She can have extra-chocolatey cocoa in the middle of the night, sharing quiet conversations and small smiles.

She’s lost so much in the past year—they all have—but she’s here now, and she can have this. She can have them.

Finally.


End file.
